Whether she is painting herself, a co-worker from Café Selmarie, people waiting on El platforms or customers boozing it up at Delilah’s, Emily Rapport uses different shades of colors and light in ways that make ordinary people and urban landscapes look terrifically real and beautiful. Rapport is showing some of her paintings in early October at the fifth annual ArtWalk Ravenswood festival, a project intended to unite the community of the Ravenswood Industrial Corridor. ArtWalk Ravenswood features many open artists’ studios from Balmoral to Roscoe, including Damen, Rockwell and Cornelia.

Rapport, 32, of Lincoln Square, has been drawing pictures since she was a kid, and she took an art class in high school in Rochester, New York, where she grew up. However, it wasn’t until her second year at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago that she learned “the fundamentals” and techniques for painting realistic images. That’s when Rapport met Art Institute teacher Marion Kryczka, who became Rapport’s mentor and taught her to dissect details before painting. Rapport says she also clicked with Kryczka because he has a down-to-earth personality.

On a recent afternoon Rapport is sitting on a stool at her art studio on quiet, tree-lined Ravenswood Avenue near Montrose. As sunshine pours through windows of her fourth-floor art studio at 4541 N. Ravenswood, Rapport says she learned from Kryczka to forget obvious, familiar details about the subjects that she paints so that she can focus on how different shades of colors and light can help her build up stronger, sharper details to make her subjects look more convincing.

Although she has gotten better at blending colors the more she paints, Rapport says she sometimes gets impatient when she is painting and thinks, “That’s not the right color!”

Rapport studied at the Art Institute and at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City before graduating from the Art Institute.

As she talks about who has influenced her, Rapport sits on the floor, flipping through pages of an art history book to point out various artists and their styles. Rapport admires artists such as Reginald Marsh, George Bellows and Robert Henri, and that’s partly because they painted ordinary, everyday people and urban scenes, including dirty, gritty, truthful details.

Heatlamp - © 2005 Emily Rapport

Although some critics have dismissed paintings that capture ordinary, working-class and lower-class people, Rapport says ordinary people interest her the most. With Marsh’s paintings and with her own paintings, Rapport says, “You’re painting what you really see.” Also, she says that those kinds of pieces are for everyone and that “everyone is pretty.”

Rapport likes painting El tracks, fast food restaurants and other urban scenes from around Chicago. Also, on www.eatpaintstudio.com, Rapport’s website that archives some of her paintings, she writes that “painting remains an act of contemplation,” and she encourages people to appreciate “small moments.“

Many people have told Rapport that her artwork reminds them of Edward Hopper. Like Hopper paintings, many of Rapport’s paintings create for me a melancholy mood, which isn’t a gloomy, depressing vibe or a happy vibe; it’s more of a thoughtful, soothing, connected feeling.

As for what she tries to communicate through her paintings, Rapport says that paintings exist beyond what one can put into words, and she says that each viewer is entitled to his or her own opinion.

Rapport got a great reaction from Mike Miller about her artwork. Miller owns Delilah’s, a bar at 2771 N. Lincoln Ave. known for offering many whiskey varieties, and he bought a painting from Rapport in 2002 at the Around the Coyote festival in Wicker Park. Miller says that the painting he bought features the inside of a Chicago tavern from the 1940s or 1950s.

The Pabst Drinker - © 2004 Emily Rapport

Since he liked that painting so much, Miller commissioned Rapport to create a series of paintings to document the 11th anniversary of Delilah’s in 2004. Over six months Rapport photographed scenes from the bar and then painted customers based on her photos.

“I couldn’t have worked with anyone who captured the essence of Delilah’s better,” Miller says. He adds that Rapport does a great job of painting people’s expressions, and he says her pieces are “definitely oozing with soul.”

In one painting, “The Pabst Drinker,” a girl with staring eyes that make her look deep in thought has a face made from a blend of light pink and red-orange, and her arms look part chalky white and part orange because of the way light illuminates her.

Miller says he is in the process of building a place behind the bar at Delilah’s so that one of Rapport’s paintings—of Fran Opre, a long-time Delilah’s bartender who was killed in a hit-and-run accident—will always remain at the bar. In “The Conversation Upstairs (With Fran)” white-light pink-orange tones and shades of orange and light pink help to define female customers’ faces and arms while dark-haired Fran pours a drink.

The Conversation (Upstairs with Fran) - © 2004 Emily Rapport

Rapport is such a workaholic, it’s a wonder how she finds time to paint. She is a website designer and a server at Café Selmarie. Also, besides showing her artwork during ArtWalk Ravenswood, Rapport has been active in building websites for ArtWalk Ravenswood and for the Chicago chapter of the Women’s Caucus for Art, which supports women in visual arts by sponsoring local exhibitions and educational programs. Rapport also helped do research for text accompanying a Ravenswood documentary photography exhibit by Andrew Steiner that is being showed at ArtWalk Ravenswood.

As for what she hopes people gain from the ArtWalk, Rapport says that she hopes that people will become less intimidated by artists and artwork; she says she hopes that any barriers between artists and other people will dissolve after folks see where and how she and other area artists work.

Talking about making art, Rapport says, “It’s not a mysterious activity. It’s not magic.” And she says, “It’s work.”

Although Rapport says “it’s a struggle” to create a schedule and make time to paint, she gets a deep sense of satisfaction when she has a good momentum going from painting.

Rapport says that aspiring artists shouldn’t worry about getting rejection; she says not to listen to people who discourage them or reject their work, for the discouragement probably has more to do with other people’s own failures. She says to “keep working at it” and to keep a good momentum going.

Emily Rapport’s paintings may be viewed on her website, www.eatpaintstudio.com, as well as in Feed the Beast restaurant, 4300 N. Lincoln Ave.